Scientists have identified a new gecko species in Madagascar. The tsaranoro gecko (Paragehyra tsaranoro) showed up in small patches of community-managed forests just outside Andringitra National Park. The lizard is nocturnal and elusive, living in rocky areas where it easily camouflages itself. Local communities protect the forest patches where researchers found tsaranoro geckos because they are sacred sites where the locals perform funeral rites. Francesco Belluardo of the University of Molise in Italy led the fieldwork to identify the species and collaborated with several local researchers and guides, including Malalatiana Rasoazanany, a biologist at the University of Antananarivo. “Someone from the village always accompanied us, both to assist in the work and to confirm that we were respecting the fady and not damaging the site,” Rasoazany said. In Malagasy culture, fady are a wide range of important cultural taboos that can vary between communities or even families. “The involvement of the local community is essential because once they understand the value of a species, for example, for ecotourism, they are more motivated to protect it,” she said. With the recent discovery, there are now 150 species of geckos in Madagascar and 439 total species of reptiles, 98% of which are endemic. In the study announcing the new classification, Belluardo and his coauthors argued that the species should be listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List due to its limited range and numbers.
Amid the human-dominated landscape, biodiversity takes refuge in cemeteries among the stoic marble monuments and resting souls, interweaving death and life. With traditional burials becoming less common, cemeteries are turning toward conservation cemeteries managed for biodiversity and green burials—a way of caring for the deceased that minimizes environmental impacts and embraces the biological processes of decomposition. Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of the first park-style burial grounds in the United States. Although home to the dead, Mount Auburn is lively with ecological restoration and research, employing a full-time ecologist and implementing a wildlife action plan that includes amphibian monitoring and field research on urban coyotes (Canis latrans). Yet Mount Auburn’s carefully managed renewal contrasts sharply with a cemetery in southeastern Arizona, where an untouched landscape shelters a rare, winged ghost of the night, the Patagonia-eyed silkmoth (Automeris patagoniensis), whose final refuge lies quietly among the graves. The endangered Patagonia-eyed silkmoth is only found within a small cemetery near the ghost town of Harshaw, Arizona, demonstrating that abandoned cemeteries can also foster important life.
In November 2020, Colorado Proposition 114 passed and gave the state a mandate to reintroduce gray wolves. But how do biologists get to work on such a project, and what does it mean for the ecosystem?
In this episode, Katie Perkins and Ed Arnett of The Wildlife Society sat down with Brenna Cassidy and Eric Odell of Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) to unpack the Colorado gray wolf (Canis lupus) reintroduction program. Cassidy is the wolf monitoring and data coordinator, and Odell is the manager of the wolf conservation program.
The conversation explores ecological and behavioral questions surrounding gray wolf reintroduction. Can wolves trigger trophic cascades and change rivers? How are ungulate populations, such as elk (Cervus canadensis) and mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), altering their behavior? Are predator dynamics shifting as wolves reestablish their range?
Odell and Cassidy also discuss CPW’s management approach to reducing human-wolf conflict, including depredation mitigation strategies and collaboration with landowners and conservation stakeholders.
“Our Wild Lives” is The Wildlife Society’s weekly podcast, sharing compelling stories from wildlife professionals doing critical work around the world. Your hosts, Katie Perkins and Ed Arnett, of The Wildlife Society, bring you thought-provoking conversations with leading experts and emerging voices.
New episodes are released weekly wherever you get your podcasts. Please email comms@wildlife.org with feedback or future episode suggestions.
Feral horses may outcompete native ungulates and cattle in the grasslands of Alberta east of the Rocky Mountains.
Their presence may also artificially subsidize predators like bears and wolves in the area, who may in turn consume more elk and bighorn sheep.
“We found evidence that feral horses may be affecting native species both in apparent competition and competition for forage,” said TWS member Birch Gano, a master’s student at the University of Montana.
Wildlife professionals have published a great deal of research on the effects that feral horses (Equus caballus) have on native wildlife and plants in the western United States. But less work has been conducted on their ecological impact in Alberta, where they number around 1,500 individuals.
Horses off the ranch
Gano, who grew up in Alberta in the foothills of the Rockies, was studying elk (Cervus canadensis) at the Ya Ha Tinda Ranch, a Parks Canada ranch where horses are kept for the winter for wardens for neighboring Banff National Park and researchers going into the backcountry. Aside from the corralled area for domesticated horses, the ranch has nearly 4,000 hectares that elk and bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) use. “It’s a very popular spot to take horses and go riding,” Gano said. “In the summer, it’s pretty busy with recreation.” The elk there are partially migratory, heading to the east of the ranch where they often encounter feral horses in the spring and summer.
Gano wondered how the presence of so many horses in the area might affect the native ungulates. “Driving out to the study area, it was crazy to see how many horses there were,” she said.
Her supervisor at the University of Montana didn’t want to touch the topic due to controversy over feral horses, but Gano decided to analyze data that researchers had been collecting in the area for the past 10 years as part of a long-term elk project at Ya Ha Tinda. Researchers had been monitoring the area using 23 trail cameras since 2013. Gano supplemented this data by collecting scat from ungulates, domestic cattle and carnivores at the ranch from 2022 to 2025.
In ongoing research Gano presented at the 2025 TWS Conference in Edmonton, Alberta, she has found that feral horse diet overlaps significantly with native elk and bighorn sheep, especially in the winter and spring, in areas east of Ya Ha Tinda. Elk also seemed to avoid the areas that feral horses foraged in, missing out on good feeding opportunities.
A feral horse in Alberta with bighorn sheep in the background. Credit: Mark Hebblewhite
But the feral horses and domestic cattle had an advantage over native ungulates. Scat analysis revealed that they made meals of more nonnative forage plants like dandelions and clover, which native ungulates don’t eat. This behavior helps horses outcompete the native ungulates and boosts the spread of these plants, as the horses spread the seeds around more widely.
“It’s like this whole ecological arms race,” Gano said.
Horse meat menu
Gano also wondered whether horses themselves were on the menu for predators in Alberta. Analysis of carnivore scat revealed that every predator in the area ate horses at least occasionally. “Horses were a big part of [the] carnivore diet,” Gano said.
Horse represented a quarter of the gray wolf (Canis lupus) diet and about a third of grizzly bears’ (Ursus arctos horribilis) meat diets.
Horses were only found in about 5% of cougar (Puma concolor) scat and in about a quarter of coyote (C. latrans) scat. The latter is likely mostly scavenging, Gano said, as coyotes are probably too small in most cases to prey on horses.
Some of the other predators could just be scavenging some of their horse meat—it’s difficult to say based just on scat analysis. “Likely, cougars are killing their own prey as well as wolves,” Gano said.
While this situation may seem like native predators are weeding out the population of an invasive species, Gano said that this injection of prey may boost the number of some predators, which may then feed on more native prey as well as horses. This dynamic is already well-known in parts of northern Alberta, where an influx of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) is driving an increase in wolf numbers, which then prey on more caribou (Rangifer tarandus) as a secondary prey item.
The Ya Ha Tinda Ranch, with Banff National Park in the background. Credit: Leigh McAdam
Gano said it’s too early to tell for sure whether feral horses are causing a similar problem with predators, elk and bighorn sheep in her study area, but “wolf and grizzly predation are the leading cause of declines in the elk populations,” she said. “[Our study] is a stepping stone into unraveling this apparent competition pathway that we know in Alberta so well.”
The fact that there may be competition between feral horses and native species in Alberta is a wake-up call for wildlife managers in the province, which currently does nothing to control numbers there. “They are currently evaluating different management trade-offs,” Gano said.
Armadillos are digging their way past manmade barriers and even walking underwater as they defy past predictions and expand their range across the U.S.
Their spread brings new challenges for human-wildlife coexistence in areas unaccustomed to the presence of these ecological engineers. Fears of them spreading disease like leprosy may be overblown, but as ecosystem engineers that build numerous burrows, armadillos cause issues for agriculture and infrastructure. Ecologically, armadillos aerate the soil and produce burrows that other animals use for shelter.
“The arrival of armadillos presents unique management challenges because of their potential, real or perceived, impacts on human health, agriculture and property,” said Anant Deshwal, a professor at Bradley University in Illinois.
First spreading from Mexico to Texas in 1849, the nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) has been steadily expanding its range northward and eastward. Though their movement is constrained by temperature and precipitation, this rapid expansion has been fueled by changes in climate, land use, and at least one human-assisted release in Florida.
In a new study published in Diversity, Deshwal and his colleagues show that the nine-banded armadillo range has surpassed the limits previously predicted in an ecological limitation study conducted 10 years ago.
Drawing on previous scientific studies, public reports, roadkill data, and observations from hunters and trappers, the authors of this recent work mapped the armadillo’s expanding range. They used environmental data like climate, land cover, elevation and human population density to predict what drives their range expansion.
Extensive range expansion
The analysis confirmed that armadillos are now established in 17 states, and they haven’t stopped yet—the new data show evidence of ongoing expansion. Armadillos now occupy all of Missouri and southern Iowa and have expanded within Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia. The team also found some occasional reports of the species in Nebraska, Michigan, Ohio and Virginia.
This spread comes with ecological and management implications. Armadillos are considered ecosystem engineers, capable of significantly reshaping environments. They dig large burrows that can disrupt agriculture, infrastructure and gardens.
Every nine-banded armadillo litter is made up of four genetically identical young from a single fertilized egg that splits into four embryos. Credit: Land Between the Lakes KY/TN
One of the public’s largest concerns is Hansen’s disease, also known as leprosy, which armadillos can carry and transmit to humans. However, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, around 95% of people are naturally immune to the bacteria that causes the disease, making the fears overblown.
Armadillos can also damage lawns, gardens, and infrastructure through their digging and burrowing. In states where they’re newly arrived, wildlife managers are still working to understand how best to respond to the potential damage.
But Deshwal noted that rather than reacting with fear, “we should look to states already coexisting with armadillos to learn how to manage potential conflict.”
“Armadillos are resilient as anything,” Deshwal added. “They can hold their breath and walk for several minutes underwater.” Only major rivers like the Mississippi present a barrier to their movement.
Because habitat type is not a limiting factor, and because their expansion is mostly constrained by temperature and precipitation, their range is expected to continue to expand in the coming years.
“As armadillos keep moving,” Deshwal said, “transparent, science-based public information will be key to easing fear and avoiding sensationalism.”
Proactive strategies and community education may help reduce conflict and support coexistence with these interesting new neighbors, he said.
A federal appeals court has granted the U.S. government’s request to pause proceedings in a lawsuit challenging the controversial “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center in the Florida Everglades. An earlier court decision ruled that the facility should close by the end of September because its operation violated federal environmental laws protecting the Everglades. The decision, issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, freezes legal efforts by conservation groups seeking to halt operations at the facility built within the ecologically fragile Big Cypress National Preserve until funds have been restored. “Alligator Alcatraz,” officially known as the Big Cypress Detention and Processing Center, is a vast swath of wetland adjacent to critical habitat for the Florida Panther (Puma concolor coryi), as well as other endangered species. The Everglades is the largest mangrove ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere and the largest continuous stand of sawgrass prairie.
The research practice of stunning northern pike in the water with electricity is shockingly effective—and the fish seem resilient as they swim in the lake currents in the months that follow.
“Northern pike are quite resilient to electrofishing in terms of growth and survival,” said James Reynolds, a professor emeritus in fisheries science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Northern pike are found widely across temperate parts of the world. In many parts of the U.S., researchers monitor factors like disease, average fish size and population using electroshock techniques. The procedure involves using a battery or generator and a control unit that allows researchers to modify the voltage. Researchers place metal electrodes into the water, then generate voltage that can kill or stun fish, depending on the voltage intensity and the pulses per second, or the hertz. The goal of electrofishing is to stun fish and capture them with dipnets. The fish are examined, allowed to recover, and then released alive. Electrofishing is used only by professional biologists—it’s illegal for anglers.
Researchers have measured the impact of different hertz and voltage levels on other species, but nobody had looked at the impact on northern pike (Esox lucius). This species is important in Alaska, where Reynolds had worked for decades, where it’s either invasive or native depending on which part of the state they are found in. North and west of the Alaska Range, for example, they are native. But in south-central Alaska around Anchorage, anglers illegally introduced northern pike in the 1950s for sport. The fish has since become invasive there.
Shocking tests
In a study published recently online in the Journal of Wildlife Management, Reynolds and his colleagues tested whether electroshocking negatively affected northern pike using facilities at Colorado State University.
An electrofishing research crew in a boat. The electrical nodes at the back introduce voltage to the water that stuns nearby fish. Credit: James Reynolds
They put 140 adult fish they caught from the wild in lakes in Colorado and South Dakota into tanks and shocked each one for five seconds. Then, they released the fish into experimental ponds alongside 70 northern pike that weren’t shocked as a control. They marked all fish using dart tags implanted through the fish’s dorsal muscle, which look like plastic spaghetti noodles with arrowheads. Dart tags are used to identify individuals in much the same way as leg bands on birds.
The researchers held the fish there for a little over a month to monitor short-term effects on survival. They then drained these ponds to examine the survivors before the next phase of the experiment.
The shocked fish had significant injuries. For this experiment, the team had administered a shock treatment of 120 hertz—double the amount usually used for northern pike. This higher amount, they found, resulted in compressed or fractured vertebrae—some 28% of shocked fish had these injuries. “The spinal column takes a beating—it gets damaged,” Reynolds said.
But these injuries didn’t seem too serious—90% of all northern pike survived. “We found no difference between the survival of the control and the shocked fish,” Reynolds said.
The test tank at Colorado State University where researchers shocked northern pike. Credit: James Reynolds
The team then placed the fish in a 25-hectare lake on campus for almost a year. They sampled the pike in this lake with gillnets and again found no difference in survival between the shocked fish and the control group.
Reynolds said the study shows that northern pike are quite resilient to shock treatment. But while it doesn’t seem to affect survival, the authors recommended only 60 Hertz shocks be used in the future to reduce spinal injuries. The recommendation is partly to avoid unnecessary injuries in native northern pike populations, but also because shock treatment often stuns any species near the electrodes placed in the water. Reynolds said that some salmon and trout species may be less resilient to the higher 120-hertz treatment, so it’s best to be safe—even when monitoring invasive populations of northern pike in parts of south-central Alaska.
This article features peer-reviewed research originally slated for publication in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s now defunded Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management. The Wildlife Society has picked up these “orphaned” studies, publishing them in a special section of the Journal of Wildlife Management’s November Issue. Individual online access to all TWS journal articles is a benefit of membership. Join TWS now to read the latest in wildlife research.
A recent court filing reveals that the Department of Interior intends to potentially eliminate an additional 2,000 jobs across the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey. The reduction in force (RIF) would coincide with the second-longest shutdown of the federal government, currently totaling 27 days. This move comes despite a ruling by a federal judge in California, who found that the RIF could not proceed during the shutdown. The federal judge stated that using the shutdown to implement layoffs is “both illegal and in excess of authority, and is arbitrary and capricious,” according to NPR.
Highlighting the real-world consequences of the proposed cuts to wildlife professionals, Ed Arnett, CEO of TWS, told Outdoor Life, “We’re going to lose scientific capacity to inform habitat management projects and to manage harvest and the impacts of human disturbances like energy development,” and said that he has fears some conservation programs may be permanently lost.
TWS continues to monitor the situation and stand with our members and colleagues affected by recent federal workforce reductions.
TWS is committed to advocating for our members and colleagues affected by recent federal workforce reductions and providing resources to support your professional and personal well-being during this time.
Elk had been extirpated from Nebraska since the 1800s before they began to reclaim parts of their historical range in the 1960s. But the landscape had changed greatly due to human activities in their absence, and ecologists still don’t have a good grasp on how elk use the land that they have returned to.
Numbers have increased in the past seven decades—elk likely now number up to a few thousand in Nebraska. Recently, in a state dominated by farmland and fragmented habitat, researchers have set out to learn when, where, why and if Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus canadensis) move in Nebraska. The answers could help wildlife managers navigate the growing tension between public admiration for elk and frustration over the damage they can cause.
“In some cases, it appeared that completely different groups of elk occupied natural and agricultural spaces, when in reality it was often the same elk that had moved a considerable distance,” said Tabitha Hughes, a PhD student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Lead author Hughes and her colleagues tracked more than 150 elk with GPS collars in their research recently published in Biological Conservation.
It’s unclear how elk used to move through the landscape before their extirpation in the 1800s. But since their return to Nebraska, the study revealed that some elk tend to seasonally shift between wild and agricultural areas, drawn by natural and agricultural food. In areas with more vegetative cover and more cornfields, elk used smaller home ranges. The tracked ungulates moved greater distances to access areas with substantial cropland when calving and in the fall.
This fixation with crops has led to human-wildlife conflict, as elk can damage crops. The large animals can also tear down fences during their movements across the landscape.
PhD Student Jake Harvey, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, PhD Student Tabitha Hughes, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Professor John Benson, University of Nebraska-Lincoln collar and process a Rocky Mountain bull elk. Credit: Tabitha Hughes
But hunters—the main elk management tool in Nebraska—highly value elk. Hughes and her collaborators’ research suggests that increasing natural forage may help keep elk local and that increasing the habitat that produces food naturally could be an alternative management strategy, reducing seasonal movements of elk into cropland.
This research fills a key gap in understanding of the spatial ecology of elk in agriculture-dominated landscapes and offers critical guidance for wildlife managers tasked with balancing public interest, hunting opportunities, and growing concerns over crop damage.
“The better we understand these animals, the better equipped wildlife biologists will be to manage elk populations for the public to enjoy,” Hughes said.
A popular technique for boosting bat conservation may create “death traps” for the flying mammals during heat waves. In a study published recently in the Journal of Experimental Biology, researchers measured carbon dioxide exhalation of 22 big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) nesting in southwestern British Columbia. With that information, they calculated the metabolic rates of the creatures and the amount of water they lost at different temperatures. The team then took the temperature of artificial bat roosts created to conserve bats in Lillooet, in the unceded territory of the St’át’imc Nation. Those temperatures weren’t high, so the team then modeled what the temperatures would have been during a recent heat wave. They found that temperatures would reach higher than 50 degrees Celsius on the hottest days. Part of the reason for this was that some bat boxes weren’t well-placed—they were put in direct sunlight or facing sunlight for much of the day. “Inappropriately placed artificial [bat] roosts could function as death traps for bats due to overheating,” said Ruvinda de Mel of the University of New England, Australia, in a press release. Ruvinda suggested that placing a mixture of roosts could improve the choices for bats, with some in warmer areas for spring use and others nearby in shaded areas for the hotter summer months.
